HARTFORD, Conn. — When Jackie Haggerty was just 7 years old, she huddled by her cubby in her second-grade classroom as a gunman tore through neighboring classrooms, killing 20 of her schoolmates and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Nearly a decade later, Haggerty stepped in front of hundreds of people gathered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday evening to share her story of survival ahead of remarks by President Joe Biden, who is slated to join scores of activists, advocates and survivors — many from Connecticut — for the 10th annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence.
The vigil, hosted by the Newtown-based grassroots organization Newtown Action Alliance, is held in the nation’s capital every December to mark the anniversary of the tragedy and call on Americans to honor the memories of those killed by taking action.
With the 10-year remembrance of the tragedy at Sandy Hook next Wednesday, many young activists like Haggerty are more motivated than ever to be the voice for their classmates and educators who were killed, to remind the country of the horror they survived and to implore lawmakers to pass legislation to prevent other students from facing the same fate as the 26 killed in Newtown and the more than 400,000 Americans killed by guns in the 10 years since.
When she looks back on that morning 10 years ago, Haggerty says she knows how close she came to being another face a memorial in her hometown, another name added to the growing list of gun violence victims.
Even at 7, she said she knew how close she came to dying. She heard the rapid fire of the gunshots that rang out in the classroom behind hers and knew that it all came down to which unlockable classroom door gunman Adam Lanza chose to open.
“If that awful individual had chosen the other side of that hallway, I would not be sitting on this bus,” Haggerty said on Wednesday morning after leaving Newtown at dawn to head to Washington, D.C. “This would be a vigil honoring me.”
Haggerty, a 17-year-old red-haired triplet whose life is filled with equal parts college applications and activism in her senior year at Newtown High School, reminded herself that she continues to tell her story because she can — because she survived that day and she still has a voice.
“I’m doing this, in a way, to acknowledge the fact that it was almost me,” she said. “It wasn’t me. I’m here. And I’m trying to honor them because I know it was so close to being my classroom, it was so close to being me.”
Looking around the bus hours into the long ride from Newtown, Haggerty said that when she grows weary or overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending stream of mass shootings and tragedies that echo Newtown’s, her memory winds its way to moments on another bus.
For the first few months of second grade, Haggerty climbed onto a yellow school bus in her rural, farm-filled corner of Sandy Hook each morning and took her seat a front corner of the school bus beside her assigned “bus buddy,” a bubbly first-grader named Charlotte Bacon.
Charlotte, 6, was one of the 20 first graders who were murdered shortly after their school buses dropped them off on Dec. 14, 2012, just before winter break.
Haggerty hesitates to speak of Charlotte sometimes, she said, because the two hardly got to know one another. Their rides to school were short and their friendship shorter.
On their rides, Haggerty said, she and Charlotte “were like two little old ladies,” laughing their way along the winding route to school. Their friendship was only beginning to bud, with the hope of a playdate planned on their rides to school.
“We never did get to have our playdate,” she said Wednesday.
She remembers Charlotte’s love of animals and her big heart.
“That was just the beginning of our relationship and it was cut short,” said Haggerty, who described Charlotte as “this little bubble of happiness” whose infectious giggle rippled through the bus twice a day. When she thinks of her, she said, she thinks of innocence.
“I think about her all the time, and she kind of helps me a little bit, to keep going,” she said.
In the wake of the tragedy, loved ones tried to encapsulate the all-too-short lives of the 6 and 7-year-olds killed at Sandy Hook in brief vignettes shared through a project called My Sandy Hook Family. Charlotte Bacon’s family wrote that she “was unique and left a lasting impression on all.”
Charlotte, often wearing pink, loved to wear her hair in pigtails — or “piggies” as she called them — tied with pink ribbons. She loved to pick flowers from her mother’s garden and to add to her collection of stuffed dogs.
Her family wrote that as they heard Charlotte described as curious, adventurous and never intimidated, they like to use the word bold.
And bold is what Haggerty is trying to be.
“Bold is the only thing that gets acros; you have to stand up and share your story,” she said. “The bigger the better. The more people that see us, maybe their minds will be changed.”
When she sat down to write her remarks, Haggerty said she wanted to emphasize the somberness of the event and represent those they were there to remember.
“I’m a voice for people who no longer have a voice,” she said.
“They can’t share that story, because they’re not here. They can’t share that experience, so I should.”
As the decade milestone looms, Haggerty doesn’t want her classmates, teachers or fellow survivors to be forgotten. She wants everyone to understand the trauma she and her classmates endured and the ripple effect the trauma has had in Newtown and communities across the country.
“I never want people to forget about Sandy Hook,” she said.
After battling a decade of survivor guilt, a fight she still faces, she reminds herself of a lesson she learned along the way.
“I felt so guilty knowing that I walked out of the school and my peers didn’t,” she said.
“There must have been some reason that I walked out, there must be something that I’m offering to the world that is going to affect people.”
Po Murray, co-founder and Chairwoman of the Newtown Action Alliance and Newtown Action Alliance Foundation, stood before a room packed with survivors, advocates and loved ones before the vigil Wednesday and said that the foundation has invited the president to attend their vigil each and every year.
“We are thrilled that the president will be joining us tonight. We have been encouraging many presidents to lean in over the years and to join us,” she said. “This is the first time a president has accepted our invitation.”
Standing in the room full of survivors, some wiping tears from their eyes surrounded by photos of their loved ones killed in Parkland, Florida; Uvalde, Texas; and Buffalo, New York.
“We don’t want to meet another survivor, and in order for that to happen we need transformational change,” Murray said.
In addition to remarks from Biden, the vigil was set to include a welcome from Murray, who started the organization in the wake of the Newtown shooting, and moving testimonies from those whose loved ones have been murdered in shootings across the map, including Kimberly and Felix Rubio, parents of Alexandria “Lexi” Rubio who was killed in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last May 24 that starkly mirrored the tragedy at Sandy Hook.
Mark Barden, co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise whose 7-year-old son Daniel Barden was killed at Sandy Hook, will perform a musical number alongside his daughter, Natalie Barden.
Nicole Melchionno, another survivor of the Sandy Hook shooting, and action alliance board member Carole Wakeman will deliver calls to action and share their visions for a future with fewer mass shootings like those their town suffered through.
As Haggerty prepared to share her story, she leaned on the words of those who she speaks for.
She remembered the words that Scarlett Lewis, mother of murdered 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, spoke at her son’s funeral: “Choose love.” A message that began with a note Jesse Lewis scrawled on their kitchen wall before the shooting, “nurturing, healing, love.”
And she remembered a message from her principal, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, that was written on Haggerty’s school bus in the wake of the tragedy. “Be nice to each other. It’s really all that matters.”
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